Happy Birthday, Jim

Happy Birthday, Jim Catechi. Jim is a friend from the theater years; we met while doing late night shorts for the old AHA! Theatre group. We got off to a rocky start as he made a move on a girl in whom I had one of my patented One-Sided-Love-Affairs-From-Afar, so I was not willing to give him the time of day until I heard it never went anywhere (yeah, well I was young).

Glad it didn't because he has been a good friend for many years. A talented designer, photographer (photographed my wedding in fact) and cook, we have spent many an hour eating good food, drinking good beer, playing mediocre poker and watching baseball that varied between dreadful and inspired. (Jim is the only man I know who had tickets to the two baseball games ever called because of an earthquake - the 1989 World Series and the old Kingdome quake in the 90's when we were sitting in the owner's suite.) We were also known for our joint birthday casino night parties (he is 5 years older than me to the day).

And I wish our history was just that cool, but in full disclosure I have to admit we also spent many, many hours playing Magic: The Gathering as well. To the point where we brought our cards along when we spent a week in Acapulco. Yeah, yeah, yeah. (Hey, now that I am 40 do I get to rewrite history to fit my personal narrative or do I have to wait until I am past 70, like McCain.)

Happy Birthday, James.